Armed with only a wacom tablet, less-than-mediocre drawing skills and an acute sense of smell, professional photographer Ted Sabarese guesses how individual images were lit by other photographers and then sketches corresponding lighting diagrams. He also offers, sometimes humorous, behind-the-scenes insight. It's what you always wanted to know but didn't know who to ask.

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GQ

Rihanna may currently be entangled in a dab of plagiarism controversy over her latest video, but that doesn’t take away from the utter sexiness seeping from this January 2010 GQ cover. Michael’s soft, backlighting paints a glamorous yet angelic picture of this rock and roll siren. Five strobes did the trick.

Comments: Both avid potholers, Michael and Rihanna spent a good part of the shoot discussing their favorite secret caverns, halogen vs. LED helmet lights and whether a figure-of-eight knot was stronger than an alpine butterfly. All of which helped distract Rihanna from the fact her shorts, although very cool, wouldn’t zip up all the way.

Pre Brad. Pre mother of 37 children. This 2000 portrait of Angelina for British GQ was created with 3 lights. Soft lights.

Camera: Pentax 67 with 90mm lens and Kodak Portra 100 negative film, set on a tripod 8 feet back. Shot at 1/30, f5.6, ISO 100. The image was color, then scanned and converted to b&w.

Lighting: The key light is a large octabank at f5.6 boomed directly over camera and angled slightly downward. The two large soft boxes at f11 (+2 stops) positioned behind the frame with a full silk create the softly glowing, white background and also add the highlights on Angelina’s cheeks and torso.

Comments: Angelina flew herself to the shoot in a Cirrus SR-22 single piston engine aircraft, which she ejected from and let crash into the ocean. While parachuting toward the studio, she changed into wardrobe, applied makeup and curled her hair. She then cut the chute, shattered through an oversized skylight, landed upright, brushed off any stray chards of glass, winked to Antoine and said, “let’s do this bitch, Ant.”

Lighting: The key light is a white beauty dish at f8 boomed high behind the camera and pointed down. Two normal reflectors, both at f5.6, are shot through white, translucent umbrellas 5 feet camera left and right for the fill light. To light the background, one normal reflector at f5.6 was bounced into the white side of a v-flat on both the left and right sides of frame. This allows the background to fall off from true white and match, more closely, Spike’s skin tone.

Comments: To get this visual reaction from Mr. Jonze, Nadav asked him to try to think of ten other famous Spikes while everyone on set just stared in silence and waited for the answer.